Last year, Brooklyn lo-fi folkies Woods put out the refreshingly brief, refreshingly awesome At Echo Lake (TMT Review). Normal folks would have taken a bit of a break and given the public time to prep themselves for some more crisp, Neil Young-ish folk rock, but Woods — evil geniuses that they are — have no regard for the public’s needs relating to their music. As they see it, the world needs more Woods records (and I’m not inclined to say they’re wrong), so they’ve got another one, Sun & Shade, coming out via their own Woodsist label on June 14.

Strange things are afoot at that very Woodsist label, though. Strange things that aren’t actually that strange, namely the creation of a Woodsist Headquarters in the small town of Warwick, NY. To christen their sturdy ship, the folks at Woodsist went and recorded an album. That album? Sun & Shade. See, it all comes back around. Did you think I was getting off track, telling you a tangential anecdote about Woodsist Headquarters? Well, I wasn’t.

More tales from Woodsist HQ: Woods had some help making Sun & Shade. That help came in the form of Glenn Donaldson, who you may know from his work with The Skygreen Leopards and The Art Museums. What exactly was the help that Donaldson provided? Production work? Extra instrumentation? Catering? Could be anything, as the press release doesn’t say. Donaldson, however, had some fine words of his own about Woods on this new record: “These guys veer into West Coast & Kraut explorations when they get bored of structure, but you won’t mind indulging them.” Oh man, just like me! I’m always eschewing the structure of my office job for krautrock indulgences. My co-workers aren’t that permissive, though.

Before letting the world into all that Sun & Shade, Woods will be taking a trip to Europe. That’s where they’ll play their live dates! I mean, they’ll probably play more after that in other places. But right now, they’re playing shows in Europe. That’s the Woods way.

Julee Cruise — she of the enchanting, ethereal vocal cords, she of the David Lynch collaborations, she of the B-52s (she was the replacement singer for Cindy Wilson for several years) — has a new album. And a snazzy new European tour with Kid Congo Powers and electronic artist Khan! Indeed, Ms. Cruise’s life story is full of interesting facts and exciting acquaintances, one of whom is Ukrainian-born Deee-lite member Supa DJ Dmitry, with whom she just released My Secret Life, a new album on Purley Sounds.

Some fun facts about Julee Cruise: Moby, David Bowie, and David Foster Wallace are all fans! She’s the voice of “Falling,” the theme song from Twin Peaks! She has worked with Handsome Boy Modeling School! She debuted as a performance artist to be reckoned with as part of David Lynch’s “Industrial Symphony #1” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival whilst wearing a prom dress and suspended 80 feet above the stage!

If you’re in Europe, she’s currently on the aforementioned tour with Kid Congo Powers and Khan, collaborating on a project called “Burn, Baby, Burn.” No details yet on this summer’s tour with Dmitry, but it’s on its way.

The news is still coming in on the exact magnitude of devastation caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, but it’s been clear for days now that help is desperately needed and will be for an untold length of time. Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have already sent teams of medical and logistical staff into Japan’s Miyagi prefecture and other areas most affected by the disaster, and they’re relying on donations from the public to fund their efforts.

As an incentive to get more people donating, America’s $1 funnyman Neil Hamburger is taking a break from insulting teenagers on Twitter to offer a rare recording from early in his career. “Live in Tokyo” features a greasy-behind-the-ears Hamburger stumbling through material in 1994, and is free for the taking, provided you give at least $5 to tsunami relief. Simply donate to a worthy organization like the above mentioned or the Red Cross, and then email your donation receipt to Tara Dunphy at management@americasfunnyman.com. You’ll get an Mp3 of “Live in Tokyo” sent back to you shortly after.

What’s that? You demand more prizes for being a decent human being? Okay… Neil is also teaming up with our good friend Tim Heidecker to record a brand new 10-minute comedy bit, but the track won’t be released until they’ve raised $10K. Heidecker says to send your donation receipt to dinnerheads@gmail.com, so I guess it won’t hurt to send it to both email addresses. Give what you can to help, and you’ll reap rewards both mental and physical.

Lauryn Hill said her heart was in Zion
I wish her heart still was in rhyming

So said Mr. Kanye West on “Champion,” one of the better tracks on his kind-of-sort-of-questionable Graduation (TMT Review) album. That was roughly four years ago, but, to be fair, Ms. Hill probably gets a lot of wishes and fan mail and such to sort through. In this case, she plays the Ringo Starr to Kanye West’s Marge Simpson, as she is now answering his wishes with a string of 12 dates known as the “Moving Target: Extended Intimate Playdate Series.”

Now, Hill did do some touring last year, but from that Kanye West quote, I sense a desire for her to do a series of dates in smaller venues. Subtext, people! On this upcoming tour, Hill will in fact be playing relatively small venues, at least for someone who draws Lauryn Hill crowds, i.e. large ones. Intimate, tiny shows like Coachella, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and Miami’s Jazz in the Gardens Festival! And, fine, actual small venues like the House of Blues.

Those hungry for more information about this tour will have to eschew small venues for the biggest venue of them all: the internet. By following @MsHillMvngTrgt on Twitter, you can get info on any breaking news about the tour. Alternatively, you could just use it to send along fart jokes, fulfilling your dream of possibly (but probably not, let’s be honest) making Lauryn Hill read your fart jokes. Close up the internet, folks, it has now reached its apex.

Well, baby-boomers and pop music fans, the long and agonizing wait is finally over. Yes, that’s right, this year you will finally be able to get your copy of the lost and never completed Beach Boys album SMiLE. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, SMiLE was supposed to be The Beach Boys’ stunning follow-up to Pet Sounds but — long story short — Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson did a lot of drugs, got waaay stressed out, and had a complete and total mental and physical breakdown, and the album was never completed.

As a side-note, you can already get a whole bunch of the material that was supposed to make up the SMiLE album on releases like Smiley Smile, Brian Wilson’s solo SMiLE, and plenty of bootlegs, so in my opinion, SMiLE is very much one of the “most-released unreleased albums” of all time.

In any case, this is going to be the “first official release of SMiLE that includes all necessary and important material and is supported by all members of the band,” so that’s important to note. Brian Wilson even said: “I’m thrilled that The Beach Boys’ original studio sessions for SMiLE will be released for the first time, after all these years. I’m looking forward to this collection of the original recordings and having fans hear the beautiful angelic voices of the boys in a proper studio release.”

SMiLE, which is being retitled as The Smile Sessions, will be available in three versions: a two-CD set, an iTunes digital LP, and a box set containing four CDs, two vinyl LPs, two vinyl singles, and a 60-page hardbound book written by Beach Boys historian Domenic Priore. A release date and tracklist have not been announced, and thus we all know what the real news is: it’s not actually coming out yet and you’ll have to wait three more decades. Sorry.

Owsley “Bear” Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was believed to be 76.

The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco’s Bay Area.

“He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor,” former rock ‘n’ roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

Hendrix’s song “Purple Haze” was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley’s product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The ear-splitting blues-psychedelic combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.

Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of their live sound at a time when little thought was given to amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts were turned into live albums.

The Dead wrote about him in their song “Alice D. Millionaire” after a 1967 arrest prompted a newspaper to describe Stanley as an “LSD millionaire.” Steely Dan’s 1976 single “Kid Charlemagne” was loosely inspired by Stanley’s exploits.